Problem with URL with selector

[SanaQu]

Hi everyone,

We’re on Cloud and when authors publish /content/acme/en/products.page.html, that URL updates right away, but the versions with selectors (like /content/acme/en/products.list.page.html) and the clean URL (/content/acme/en/products) stay stale for a few minutes behind the CDN/Dispatcher. How can I track down what’s caching what, and fix it so all variants invalidate together?

[SantoshSai · Accepted solution]

Hi @SanaQu,

Try running a few quick header checks on each variant right after publish like :

# canonical
curl -I https://www.example.com/content/acme/en/products.page.html
# selector
curl -I https://www.example.com/content/acme/en/products.list.page.html
# extensionless (clean)
curl -I https://www.example.com/content/acme/en/products

Look at:

• Age, X-Cache, Via → tells you CDN hits.

• Any X-Dispatcher-*/X-Cache-Info (or log grep) - Dispatcher.

• Cache-Control / Surrogate-Control / ETag / Last-Modified - whether revalidation is even possible.

If canonical is fresh but the other two show Age climbing, you’ve confirmed variant-specific caching.

Invalidate dispatcher: Set .stat at site depth and allow html/json invalidation:

/cache { /statfileslevel "3" }        # /content/acme/en/.stat
/invalidate {
  /0000 { /glob "*"      /type "deny" }
  /0001 { /glob "*.html" /type "allow" }
  /0002 { /glob "*.json" /type "allow" }
}​

ath the end, see if your rewrite makes extensionless resolve to the canonical before cache keying.

• If variants stay, purge with a wildcard or shared surrogate key (e.g., /content/acme/en/products*).
  If everything redirects to canonical, one purge is enough.

• curl -I each variant - Age: 0 right after publish; no mismatched keys.

[HrishikeshKagne]

Hi @SanaQu ,

What’s happening is:- when you publish, only the exact path /products.page.html gets invalidated. Variants like /products.list.page.html or the extensionless /products are treated as separate URLs by the CDN/Dispatcher, so they stay cached until TTL expires.

Check the AEM Publish flush logs to see what paths are being invalidated.

Adjust your Dispatcher/CDN cache rules so cache-invalidations include selectors and extensionless variants (wildcards or regex).

Or configure resource-based invalidation (invalidate by node path) so all URL variants of the same page clear together.

selectors and clean URLs aren’t auto-flushed — you need to expand your cache flush rules to cover them.